Rules

Rules
26-03-12

You do not know how hard I cry,
When I see the letter 'i'
Written as a letter, small,
And not allowed to grow up tall.

There is a part of me that bleeds
Every single time I read
A poem where the punctuation's lacking –
It may be style but I think it's slacking.

I get all tied-up in a tizz
When you don't know what enjambment is.
Read it up, why don't you, please –
Line breaks don't tell you where to breathe.

Simple things like commas, can,
When mauled by misunderstanding hands,
Be placed like decorations on a face
And never know their rightful place.

A period, our lovely friend,
Denotes where a sentence ends.
So leave him out? I think no,
Unless you want your sentence to go
On and on and on and on
Until the mind is deadened, gone.

Semi-colons, hyphens, dashes,
Each one of these adds splashes
Of punctuated colour upon our page;
They aren't outdated – they cannot age.

Punctuation and grammar; two best friends,
Governed by rules that should not bend.
So I implore you, read up on those rules:
And remember what you learned in school.